The Intentional Writer: Finding the Time, Space, and Inspiration You Need to Write

We all get overwhelmed with how much we have to do – especially now many of us are writers, publishers and marketers.

As well as parents, spouses, friends and people living in the real world! But it's important to remember what we are doing this for, our definition of success, and whether we are willing to pay the price for that future.

In today's article, Erin Bartels talks about how to be intentional about your writing practice.

The power of intention

I live about two minutes away from Michigan State University. For nine months of the year, nearly everyone around me is talking football or basketball. It’s a performance-obsessed city.

Practice makes perfect, and you can bet that the many young men and women involved in collegiate sports just down the road know how much practice it takes to be great, to be champions. Day in, day out, early in the morning or late into the night, they are honing their skills, pushing their bodies, and slowly but surely becoming incredible athletes. They are intentional about their chosen sport.

Become a writing champion

What about us as writers? Are we being intentional enough about our writing?

Are we giving our art the kind of dedication a gymnast gives to the uneven bars?

Are we practicing our craft day in and day out like the tight end who never misses a lifting session? Or are we giving in to our excuses? I don’t have enough time. I don’t have the right space. I don’t know what to write about.

We’ve all done it. But if we want to be great writers, writers who finish and publish our books, writers who attract readers and fans, writers who win contests and awards, then we need to treat our writing like the athlete treats the practice field.

Devise a game plan

Would any self-respecting coach allow a player to remain on the team if he kept flaking out of practice? No. His body would not be conditioned enough to endure the game. Her skills would not be up to snuff. It’s possible—easy even—to write in fits and spurts. I did it for many years. But when I was doing that, I never finished anything. I didn’t have the endurance, the conditioning, the skills to push through the obstacles because I was flaky about my practice. I thought I was naturally good enough to play, that it would be a cinch. Wrong. What I needed was a way to get beyond my excuses (see above) and be my own coach and whip myself into shape. I needed a plan that I could stick to.

Strength, endurance and conditioning

Knowing that I would fail miserably if I started too strong—like trying to run a marathon when I couldn’t even run a mile without a mild heart attack—I came up with a very reasonable plan: write one short story each month for a year. That’s it. I didn’t make myself write every day, but I had a monthly deadline to meet, which caused me to write much more regularly.

Hitting your goals

And it worked. I reached my goal, practiced my art, and conditioned myself so that now I write nearly every day. My storytelling skills have improved, my characters are more interesting and nuanced, my output has greatly increased. In fact, since the beginning of 2014, I’ve already written far more than I did for the entirety of 2013!

Don't let excuses stop you

Without plans or goals, we can let years go by as we get busy with other things—raising children, inventing home improvement projects, watching a relentless string of must-see TV shows, pursuing other more enjoyable hobbies, or even mindlessly staring at our cursed phones. And sometime down the road we can find that we’ve produced nothing. Not just nothing worth reading, but nothing at all.

Use a winning strategy

I want to leave you with three specific tips—one for finding time, one for finding space, and one for finding inspiration—that can help you coach yourself into a regular “practice time” so that you can become the writer you’re meant to be.

(1) Time: The Creative Power of Momentum:

Everyone knows the standard advice: get up earlier or stay up later. But what if you want to get in a block of concentrated writing, kind of like a writing boot camp? If you have vacation time, take a week off while your kids are in school and your spouse is working, then write like the devil is at your heels for that entire week. I have twice written 40,000 words during vacation weeks. Think of the kind of momentum you generate by getting that much content on the page. It’s exhilarating.

(2) Space: The Creative Power of Solitude:

Whether actual walls or a kind of invisible force field, we all need space in which to work. If you must write where others have access, you have to set up boundaries. “Mom is not to be disturbed for the next hour for anything less than a hideous raging inferno.” And then stick to your rules. Ignore the people around you and refuse to answer them. Don’t make eye contact; it only encourages them. Eventually, they will get the picture and it will soon become a normal part of life. This is not you being a jerk to your family.

Growing up, I knew I was not to talk to my father for the first thirty minutes after he came home from work. He sat in the living room, martini in hand, eyes closed, blaring his favorite music on high-end stereo equipment. During his decompression time, we did not speak unless spoken to and we sure as heck didn’t play in the living room. We were allowed to sit silently in there. That’s it. We didn’t think he was mad at us. We didn’t resent it. It was normal.

(3) Inspiration: The Creative Power of Routine:

Professional writers, like successful athletes, have a schedule, a routine that they adhere to. If we generally write at the same time each day and stay at our desks until the same time each day, we train ourselves to open our minds to inspiration at those times. That doesn't mean there aren't times when we simply stare at the screen, fingers poised limply over the keys, doing nothing. But it means that we are more likely to break through writer’s block because we don’t allow ourselves to get distracted. A routine might seem like it would stifle your creativity, but in most cases routine actually aids and invites creativity. It makes room for inspiration every day.

Commitment and follow-through

Here’s the hard truth: Your time is entirely under your control. We all make time for what is important to us. The players on Michigan State University's football team made time for the practice they needed in order win the Rose Bowl this year. They committed themselves to the team and gave it their all. They made it happen because they made time in their lives to become great football players.

You can waste years waiting for everything in your life to fall into place so you’ll have the time, space, and inspiration to write. Listen: it won’t. You have to take charge and make writing a priority in your life. No more guilt. No more excuses.I know you can do it.

How do you make time and space for your writing? Please leave a comment below and join the conversation.

Named by the Saturday Evening Post among “the greatest up-and-coming fiction writers today, Erin Bartels has worked in the traditional publishing industry for twelve years.

A prolific short story writer, she is the author of The Intentional Writer, which offers many more tips and tricks for making great creative writing a regular part of your life, and is currently writing a novel. She is a board member of the Capital City Writers Association and the features editor for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Find her at erinbartels.com.

Comments

I left my job last August to pursue my dream of writing. It was not an easy decision but the misery of the job actually pushed me to make the huge leap. Step One achieved. I now have the time to write. However, it is not that easy.
It was only this week, yes 7 months down the line, that I actually realised that writing was now my new job. Yes, I have written about 12 short stories (still unpublished) and 10 chapters of my novel, but until now, I have just sat down to write when I have felt like it, being constantly distracted by my newly found freedom.
It has taken a lot of self-discipline to get to the stage I am at now. This week, I have consciously made a schedule, a daily work plan – as if I were going to the office each day. The questions I asked myself at the end of last week, when I was worrying about money:
1) How committed am I to a career in writing?
2) Do I want to succeed and become proficient at writing?
3) What must I do to make this happen?
After answering all three questions, and reading lots of advice from a variety of sources, I devised a work plan and this week I have stuck to it. My word count is only about 2000 a day but with perseverence and hard work, I am now confident that this will increase. I have adopted a more proactive stance towards my chosen path.
This article has identified a truth, which took me 7 months to come to terms with. I am a writer and I must train every day in order to become successful at it. Thank you to Erin Bartels for describing so succinctly the ‘right path’.

That’s great to hear. I think many of us had similar approaches to our writing when we first start out. I have the unfinished novels to prove that I was dabbling for too long. Best of luck to you as you pursue your goals and make writing a regular part of your days. In this industry, perseverance can take you a long way.

I love this post. I realized this a couple of years ago after doing NaNoWriMo and having to struggle through every word every day. I was out of practice. Since then, I wake up before the rest of the world and spend an hour every morning writing! It has been life changing.

Getting up in the morning and writing before doing anything else has made all the difference for me. I don’t even eat breakfast first, I just make sure I get my writing in and then face the rest of the world. It helps that I’m self-employed with some flexibility in my schedule. But just doing that for the past few months is the reason I’m reaching my writing goals.
Thanks for the post!

Only yesterday, after a long hiatus, I made up my mind that I gotta sit down and put down some words on paper. I started with an exercise but due to lack of interest I dropped it and decided would write something that interests me. So I settled on writing down a science fiction or a fantasy story. I thought hard for a long time, about the possible situations, but couldn’t make real progress. My first step now would be to research on the Internet on this genre. However, if I could get some help on how to get inspiration as far as this genre is concerned, I would really appreciate it 🙂

I’m not sure about genre-specific inspiration. I will say that I get the most traction writing when I’ve been thinking about and studying my subject for a long time. During much of 2013, I was reading/researching for a new novel (the original idea had been hatched long before–perhaps two years ago–but at this point had grown into something much bigger and better in my mind). Since I had been thinking about my idea and researching background information for so long, when I sat down to write the first draft, it all came pouring out and I finished the first draft in 2 months. That’s not to say I wasn’t also writing other things when I was researching (during 2013, I wrote 12 short stories, one each month, as my “conditioning” to stick with the athletics metaphor). If short stories were my monthly practice, the novel draft was my “big game.” So your daily or weekly practice doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as the thing you REALLY want to write.

All this to say, if you sit down to write with just a vague germ of an idea but without much of the plot imagined or even outlined, you may find the writing feels like a slog. Maybe hold off and let that idea build and morph in your mind while you take on something a little smaller. Try just writing out one scene between possible characters. Or write character profiles, plot outlines, lavish descriptions of a setting, etc. You won’t use any of it (necessarily) in the finished work you envision, but it’s great exercise and can spur your mind on to think of an ever more interesting and complex plot. Many of my ideas, which I obsessively write down in notebooks so I won’t forget them, take years to fully form. And then, in the writing, they change some more, get more layered, more significant, more satisfying. The writing process is, in my experience, a long one.

Monday through Friday I have a sixty minute lunch break. For sixty minutes I write or edit material. In the evening, after the kids are in bed or the second job is completed, I type up my longhand notes. The needle moves every single day. And every single day I get closer to my goal of being a working playwright.

I recently blogged about a “new to me” discovery – writing retreats. They incorporate many of the things mentioned in this post. I suspect they would be most helpful for those of us who don’t get to write full time. Anyway, it’s been a great boon to my writing.
Great post! Thanks!

Hi Erin
Great post. It’s nice to read a post that’s so direct about what’s important.
I decided to self-publish properly in September 2012, and my new year’s resolution in January 2013 was to write every day. I managed it aside from a four day holiday in the autumn and cannot begin to describe the impact it’s had upon me as an author. It’s also provided me with about eight books, now awaiting editing!
In terms of how I find the time, I make it. It’s nice, because I never feel like I’m forcing myself to write. It’s always fun and I can’t wait to do it, so getting up half an hour early is easy, as is finding ten minute windows throughout the day and working late in the evening. I work full time, so it is about finding those short gaps. I think you have to be disciplined and, as you say, not let yourself get away with excuses.
Cheers
Mike

I’m doing a ton of research/mapping for my next book at the moment, to be ready to begin active writing in the autumn. I go to my local coffee shop each morning, grab a super-strong latte, turn on “Anti-Social” and force myself to work for 3 hours. This happens 6 days a week and it’s blocked on my calendar. I’ve been doing this for 6 weeks and I’m really stunned by how much of accomplished.

It’s like you were sitting in my house last night (which is impossible because you wrote this over a week ago). I let life get in the way, telling myself that it was for the betterment of the children, but there is a…(don’t judge)…almost resentment that creeps into my life when I focus so much on them that I’m no longer doing any focusing on me. And then I snap at them. My proactivity for my writing time starts today.

I truly, truly understand that resentment. I felt it often when my son was a baby/toddler and so very needy (which, of course, is to be expected but still stuns a new mom no matter how much you think you have prepared yourself). At age five, nearly six, he is now far more capable and we’ve both learned patience. Now the only thing I resent is how much of the surface areas in my home are COVERED with Legos and Transformers and all manner of random crap! 🙂

Your “short story a month idea” was a lightening bolt for me. So logical. Thank you. Found you from the March 27 post on Joanna Penn’s blog. Today, I’m buying your first short story. I’m looking forward to it. Also, tried to email this message to you at erinbartelswrites@gmail.com and got an invalid address message.

Glad it helped and thanks so much for your support. I wonder if perhaps on the email address it was mistyped. I just sent a test email to it and it appears to work. Sorry you couldn’t get through to me there! Best of luck with your writing!

I just wanted to thank you for writing this – I’ve been looking for some practical tips for making writing a priority, and you just stripped away all my excuses. Super helpful! Saving for future note-to-self reminders 🙂

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Most of the information on this site is free for you to read, watch or listen to, but The Creative Penn is also a business and my livelihood.
So please expect hyperlinks to be affiliate links in many cases, when I receive a small percentage of sales if you wish to purchase. I only recommend tools, books and services that I either use or people I know personally. Integrity and authenticity continue to be of the highest importance to me.
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I hope you find the site useful!
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